21 | February | 2013 | Hearty Eaters

So a couple of friends and I felt the winter time urge to spend the afternoon drinking hot cocoa. I couldn’t help but think if you’re going to spend the whole afternoon doing that then why not have a hot cocoa buffet!

We had three different kinds…

Nutella Cinnamon

For one serving you heat 1 cup of milk almost to a boil in a saucepan, stir in a 1/3 of a cup of Nutella, and a pinch of salt and cinnamon.

Fluffernutter Hot Cocoa

For one serving you bring one cup of milk almost to a boil thin whisk in 1/4 cup Fluff, 1/3 cup chocolate chips, 1/3 cup peanut butter chips and continue whisking until smooth.

The last cocoa was a Ginger Spice that I had to fudge some of the ingredients (has anyone ever found 5 spice powder at the store??) It wasn’t as cocoa-tastic as the other two, but we did drink it last and by then the bar had been set very high.

Heat 1 cup of milk almost to a boil then whisk in 2 tablespoons of honey, 2 tablespoons of cocoa powder, 1/4 teaspoon of ginger and a pinch of 5 spice powder.

My favorite was the Fluffernutter even though I have been making the Nutella recipe for years. The peanut butter chips just put it over the top (think melted peanut butter and chocolate ice cream). The group was split pretty evenly between the two.

Everyone brought their favorite treat to have with hot cocoa. I made miniature chocolate Pilsbury crescent rolls by simply cutting the precut dough in half and adding mini-semi sweet chocolate chips.

(There were some non-chocolate ones too. I ended up eating them with pasta the next day. They would be great with soup. We were very chocolate focused that afternoon).

My all-time favorite food to have with hot cocoa is Saltine crackers. The salty and sweet are so good together when you dip the cracker into the frothy cocoa. I thought my mom gave me this combo when I was little, but she says that I remember wrong.

Thankfully the memory goes before the taste buds!

Yes, I saw Silver Linings Playbook too and asked myself “What are homemades?” because for some reason they sound really good.

After doing the tiniest bit of research (1 google search and listening to 1 radio show interview) I found out homemades can be anything from tiny chicken salad sandwiches to homemade egg noodles.

The Super Bowl was rolling around again, so I decided homemades at our house would be tiny homemade pizzas. Think Bagel Bites but even smaller.

I had been thinking for the crust mini-bagels would work, but they turned out to be too big. Cutting English muffins into smaller disks were next on my list until John had the brilliant idea to get Pilsbury canned pizza dough.